#24 Drawing Links
2 - 21 August
Church of St.Simon and St.Jude
Drawing Links is a touring exhibition from The Drawing Room, London; a show of 5 emerging artists selected by 5 curators from around the UK including, Lucy Byatt, (Director, Spike Island, Bristol); International 3, (Manchester); Helen Legg (Public projects, IKON Gallery, Birmingham); Lynda Morris (Curator, Norwich Gallery, Norwich School of Art & Design); Andrew Patrizio, (Director of Research Development, Edinburgh College of Art).
The exhibition is composed of around 30 drawings on paper, framed and unframed, of varying sizes, small-scale sculpture and a screened dvd.
It aims to identify and present different strands of drawing as practiced by artists around the UK, with a focus on emerging artists, selected from five different regions.
OUTPOST is pleased to host Drawing Links, a touring exhibition that brings together the work of 5 emerging artists each living and working in 5 regions in the UK.
Drawing Links includes – Ruth Claxton (Birmingham), Rachel Goodyear (Manchester), Ilana Halperin (Glasgow), Lady Lucy (Bristol), Alex Pearl (Norwich) – who have each been nominated by a curator working in the same region. Nominating curators include Lucy Byatt, (Director, Spike Island, Bristol); Paulette Terry Brien, (co-Director The International 3, Manchester); Helen Legg (Curator Off-site projects, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham); Lynda Morris (Curator, Norwich Gallery, Norwich School of Art & Design); Andrew Patrizio, (Director of Research Development, Edinburgh College of Art).
Aside from deriving from an enclosed nomination process and a desire to expose London audiences to new work being produced outside of the metropolitan centre, the principal aim of Drawing Links is to identify and present different strands of drawing as practiced by artists around the UK.
While the works in the exhibition include video, small and large-scale drawings and sculpture, they are all linked through the significant use of drawing. At the former end of this scale is the work of Alex Pearl, an artist resident in Ipswich nominated by Norwich Gallery Curator Lynda Morris. Pearl produces videos as a way of bringing the objects he makes back to life. He uses this process to tackle parallels between a form of drawing that is both improvisational and explorative, and the medium of digital video.
In contrast Bristol based artist and curator Lucy Woollett, aka Lady Lucy, employs drawing as both method and purpose to produce hundreds of sketchbook drawings of the people she meets and situations she encounters, pulling on influences such as film, music and underground culture.
Similarly Glasgow resident Ilana Halperin uses drawing, photography, performance and sound to explore avenues of her reality, particularly the relationship between geology and daily life. Halperin employs drawing to make sense of the geological phenomena she encounters and aid her physical understanding of it.
Less rational is the figurative subject matter conveyed in the work of Manchester based artist Rachel Goodyear, which ranges from the mundane to the bizarre. Goodyear creates subtle and understated drawings and sculptures that incorporate humble found objects – Rizla papers, cardboard boxes, used envelopes etc – which are hung informally and unframed, enabling the drawings to commune with each other to generate a web of possible narratives.
The sculpture and installation of Birmingham based artist Ruth Claxton too reconfigures readymade objects this time to explore the dichotomy between fine art and domestic ornament. This interest finds a subtler form in her series of drawings on postcards of Old Master paintings. Here she subverts these souvenirs of the original works by altering the gaze of the sitters using scalpel, gold leaf and ink, and thereby reclaims their status as original artworks.
Drawing Links was initiated by The Drawing Room gallery in London and has since toured to International 3 in Manchester. A catalogue accompanies the show, which includes statements and illustrations from each of the five artists, and textual contributions of the five nominating curators.
